Nato state Montenegro detains top Russian war-blogger Rybar, on suspicion of plotting hybrid tricks (Ukraine Battlefield update, day 1,688)

Every day, the Ukraine Battlefield update newsletter offers a clear look at how the war is unfolding on the ground. Subscribe for free here to get the full text delivered to your inbox. Montenegro detained Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the Rybar Telegram channel. Key directions according to Rybar, Ukrainian and independent analysts. Forget Sloviansk: its capture is currently unrealistic. Ukrainian pressure continues towards Velyka Novosilka, with fighting already under way near Komar on the eastern bank of the Mokri Yaly river. Russians are infiltrating Dobropillia, but a Ukrainian counteroffensive is pressing against their flank from the north. The battle for data centres is now two-way, with Ukrainians attacking Russia’s ‘Google’. Maps of the day — Sloviansk direction; Velyka Novosilka direction; Dobropillia direction. Videos of the day — a scene from the Second World War: a MiG-29 shoots down a drone with its cannon; soldiers clear a network of Russian bunkers; Himars destroys an artillery radar; what the R-280 road to Crimea looks like. Montenegro detained Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the Rybar Telegram channel, who occupies one of the leading positions in the ecosystem of Russian media supporting the war. His wife and several associates were arrested alongside him. Colleagues in Moscow issued a statement saying they had been planning to film a report on one of the local monasteries, but the authorities of the Nato member state suspected them of conducting a hybrid operation. At the top of Russian propaganda are the traditional state media, under the Kremlin’s complete control. They have almost no informational value, as they merely repeat the regime’s propaganda. Below them, however, is a complex structure of Telegram channels that provide more varied reporting, including critical coverage. However, criticism is permitted only of mistakes in the conduct of the war, not of the war itself. These channels, too, spread propaganda and keep Russian society in a state of war, but they also provide information that helps in analysing the course of the fighting. Rybar is among the largest and most influential of them. In this case, it is not the work of an individual author but a media outlet with an editorial team and extensive content for 1.5m readers, so Zvinchuk’s arrest does not mean the end of publishing under this brand. Yet through him, we can follow the fascinating story of a man who came from Russia’s defence ministry to spread its propaganda in the years that followed. Paradoxically, however, he has recently been one of the few sources in Russia to report regularly on the Russian army’s failures at the front. And the preceding 48 hours were particularly rich in such assessments. We will therefore gradually describe events in three different directions where, according to Rybar, the Russians are either retreating or at risk of doing so. Coincidentally, these are currently the most important directions of military operations. We will compare all of its information with independent or Ukrainian sources. Forget Sloviansk: its capture is currently unrealistic. “The situation is worsening; Sloviansk is being postponed,” Rybar wrote in the first sentence of its latest analysis of the Sloviansk direction. It explained why at length. According to it, Ukrainian units in the area are increasing the pressure and exploiting their successes near Lyman, which lies north of Sloviansk. The Russian army has suffered a serious defeat here in recent months, losing a large salient from which it had hoped to bypass the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration from the north. Rybar listed the ensuing complications: according to it, Ukrainians have concentrated fresh drone units around the village of Dibrova; the Russians had to withdraw from the village of Piskunivka and are now trying to save Kryva Luka. Ukrainians are also pressing into the village of Ozerne. Ukrainian formations are increasing their activity, exploiting successes in the Lyman area, where fresh forces of drone operators have been concentrated around Dibrova. Russian troops were pushed out of what remained of the village of Piskunivka and are now defending the approaches to Kryva Luka. The enemy is trying to break through there both from the west and across the river from Ozerne. Moreover, heavy fighting is under way west of the village of Kalynyky, while fighting for Rai-Oleksandrivka is “fierce”, “although it was under the Russian army’s full control only recently”. Nor is this the end of Rybar’s bad news. An “equally difficult situation” persists on the western bank of the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal, where Russian soldiers are “for now” holding positions in the villages of Malynivka, Tykhonivka, and Yurkivka. Taken together, all of this means that the prospect of an “attack on the agglomeration has receded considerably”. “Without control of the forests below Lyman, the offensive is doomed, if not to failure, then to high losses from attacks on its flank,” Rybar added. Its map fully matches the verbal description. The red arrows running from east to west along the entire stretch have been replaced by blue, Ukrainian arrows pointing from west to east. Paradoxically, the local Telegram channel Mikolaivka-Sloviansk Online provides a far less optimistic picture. While Rybar no longer even mentions Mykolaivka, which directly borders Sloviansk, according to this source — which has repeatedly provided highly accurate and widely cited information — Russians are still managing to infiltrate it. On Wednesday, it wrote that “the Russian army is applying pressure from the direction of Rai-Oleksandrivka”, while the village itself is in the grey zone. The explanation may be simple. Most of the names refer to villages the Russians never fully captured, although they claimed they had — including Rybar itself. This is why its map looks as though a small counteroffensive were under way east of Sloviansk. In reality, it mainly makes its previous misleading claims more realistic. Far more accurate is the map by the Finnish Black Bird Group. Rai-Oleksandrivka is in the middle of the image — no credible analysts have ever considered it occupied by the Russians. Further north are Ozerne and Kryva Luka. Ozerne is particularly interesting. According to Rybar, the Russians are trying to prevent the Ukrainian army from entering the village; independent analysts show it partly in the grey zone and partly under Ukrainian control. Rybar therefore correctly sees Russian problems, but at this point this is more its usual cartographic “retreat” from unrealistic positions. Ukrainian pressure continues towards Velyka Novosilka, with fighting already under way near Komar on the eastern bank of the Mokri Yaly river. This is not entirely new either, but several Russian sources are writing about fighting in this direction with new urgency and, from the Russian perspective, scepticism. “The situation remains extremely tense. There is mounting evidence that the enemy is seeking to advance around the village of Komar,” Rybar wrote. This is an important village. When the Russians captured Velyka Novosilka last year after taking Vuhledar, Komar was a significant obstacle to their advance into Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Fierce fighting took place over the village at the time, and the Ukrainian army lost it in June 2025. The front then moved another 15 to 20 km deeper into Ukrainian territory, but it is now moving back after months of slow advances. Here, too, Rybar’s map appears more dramatic than the situation actually is. It depicts territory being liberated since February. However, it claims that the situation is worsening and the outlook is negative. But the information about movements near Komar is genuinely fresh. Other sources agree on it almost metre for metre. The Russian mapping project Slivochny Kapriz showed the exact location at the northern end of Komar, across the Mokri Yaly river, where Russian drones struck a Ukrainian video. The Ukrainian Telegram account Petrenko also geolocated the incident at the same location. Alexander Radov, another pro-war Russian, claimed that testimony from Ukrainian prisoners in this direction indicated that the Ukrainian command’s objectives were Bahatyr, 12 km east of Komar, and Velyka Novosilka itself, 13 km to the south. This claim cannot be verified, but if it were true, Ukrainian objectives in this sector would be becoming ambitious. (Both Bahatyr and Velyka Novosilka are in the lower-right section of Rybar’s map at the beginning of this section.) Russians are infiltrating Dobropillia, but a Ukrainian counteroffensive is pressing against their flank from the north. The fact that Russians are already operating in the town has been objectively confirmed by both sides. However, an earlier Russian claim that it had been encircled is false. Rybar’s map again reflects what was written. In the town itself and its surroundings, red arrows show Russian attacks, while northeast of it, Ukrainian counterattacks are shown against the flank. The Ukrainian channel Petrenko again serves as a source from the other side. Its map of Dobropillia has three circles, each marking a location where drones spotted Russian soldiers. A Ukrainian soldier writing under the name Bakhmut Demon also confirmed Russian infiltrations into the town. However, he said they were being eliminated and that Russian losses would rise from November. He probably meant the period when the leaves fall and the terrain begins to turn muddy. Both will make the attackers’ advance more difficult. Bakhmut Demon also warned that vigilance needed to be increased, as Russians are changing into civilian clothes and trying to infiltrate between Ukrainian positions in them. Soldiers on the Zaporizhzhia direction described the same practice to us during a recent trip to Ukraine. There, too, they said that men in civilian clothing are sent ahead of infiltration groups in order to deceive drone operators. Finally, another map by Black Bird Group. It, too, confirms the Russian advance towards Dobropillia, but does not show Ukrainian attacks in the north. The explanation is the same as in the previous cases: Rybar had drawn Russian positions much further forward than they actually were. The battle for data centres is now two-way, with Ukrainians attacking Russia’s ‘Google’. Yandex is a technology giant that underpins the Russian internet. Its search engine, for example, is used by two-thirds of Russians. But its services are far broader. Among other things, it provides cloud storage to its clients. The company provides its services through five main data centres. On Thursday, drones attacked the first of them. They struck the facility in Sasovo, in Ryazan oblast. “This data centre is one of the key and largest data centres in Yandex’s Russian infrastructure. It contains tens of thousands of servers, and the company’s cloud services and computing capacity for machine learning operate on its equipment,” the Russian Telegram channel Military Informant explained the significance of the target. As a result of the attack, outages in various internet-connected services were reported throughout the day. The exile website Meduza listed several affected media outlets whose websites either could not be loaded at times or loaded slowly: RBC, Vedomosti, RIA Novosti, Kommersant, Vesti, Interfax, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta. On Friday, another Yandex data centre was attacked, this time in Kaluga. The company acknowledged damage to equipment and announced that “some Yandex services may experience outages”. Videos of the day The events in the following video are almost identical to those witnessed by people in south-east England in 1944. Nazi Germany had then begun using V-1 flying bombs, and the most effective weapon against them was fighter aircraft, which shot down hundreds of these “wonder weapons” just above the sea while flying at the limit of their maximum speed. Ukrainian pilots are now using the same tactic because of a shortage of air-to-air missiles. In this case, a MiG-29 shot down a Russian Geran-4 jet drone with fire from its 30mm cannon. The MiG-29 is 17.4 metres long. The distance between it and the drone when firing began was around eight times its length — just under 150 metres. The risks to the pilot are obvious: the cloud of debris endangers the aircraft itself. Once a common sight, now more of a rarity. A Himars multiple-launch rocket system destroyed a Russian artillery radar. 💥A rare sight these days: a HIMARS strike, apparently using a GMLRS rocket, destroys a Russian Irbis counter-battery radar after it was detected and tracked by reconnaissance drones of Ukraine’s 43rd Artillery Brigade.The Irbis is a relatively new Russian multifunctional radar… pic.twitter.com/sYl3jRcD5i— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 8, 2026 The war has moved underground to an even greater extent than was previously customary. Soldiers at the front are building interconnected underground bunkers. A video by the 5th Assault Brigade shows the clearing of what were probably abandoned Russian positions. Soldiers throw explosives into the openings. The footage then allows viewers to see, from plumes of smoke and dust pouring from underground, how many entrances the bunker had and how they were arranged. The R-280 road to Crimea remains a deadly trap for Russian logistics. Days after days, the same videos are coming from southern occupied Ukraine.Large truck convoys, protected by many truck-mounted air-defense, ride at full speed on key roads. Full of goods, fuel or military hardware, they are constantly attacked by Ukrainian drones. pic.twitter.com/tSDMe8VRwd— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) October 7, 2026 What are the losses No update on Friday. By Monday (5 October), Russia had demonstrably lost 24,170 pieces of heavy equipment (24,138 on Tuesday, 22 September). Of these, Ukrainians destroyed 19,133 (19,105), 1,003 (1,000) were damaged, 1,194 (1,194) were abandoned by their crews and the Ukrainian army captured 2,840 (2,839). This includes 4,452 (4,448) tanks, of which 3,357 (3,353) were destroyed in combat. Ukraine lost 12,238 (12,175) pieces of equipment, of which 9,633 (9,579) were destroyed, 711 (702) damaged, 695 (695) abandoned and 1,199 (1,199) captured. This includes 1,466 (1,464) tanks, of which 1,126 (1,125) were destroyed in combat. Note: Neither side regularly reports its own dead or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, which cannot be independently verified. This overview uses data from the Oryx project, which has compiled a list of equipment losses documented exclusively by photographs since the beginning of the war.